How To Remove The “Powered By WordPress” Link

They say nothing comes free. Yes, we have several free themes that comes with WordPress and without this, most website or bloggers might not be able to afford a paid one at least for a start. Well, thank goodness we have free ones for most of us to start expressing our blogging passions. Some of these themes such as as Twenty Seventeen, comes with a footer message that links back to WordPress.org: Proudly powered by WordPress.

It’s a small message that you’ll see in themes such as Twenty Sixteen and Twenty Fifteen that rightfully gives kudos to the folks who volunteer for the WordPress project. After all, they created the theme you’re using free.

While it may not be a big deal to keep this message on your personal site, you may think otherwise if you’re building a site for a business or client as it looks unprofessional. So in this post, I’ll show you a couple of different ways you can remove it from the Twenty Seventeen theme and other default themes.

The “Powered by WordPress” credit link appears in the footer of all the free default WordPress themes.

Click Save and the next time you refresh your website the footer credit link will be gone.

Though this method is simple to implement, it does come with a word of warning: using this method could impact your SEO. Google doesn’t like websites that hide links because it’s a technique spammers use. So there’s a chance that if you use this method, Google could flag your site and cause your site to lose search traffic.

If losing search traffic doesn’t concern you, feel free to use this method! Otherwise, read on for alternative options.

Method 2: Editing Footer.php

Editing your theme’s footer.php file is another relatively easy way to remove the WordPress footer credit link. The footer.php file contains the information your site needs to display the footer of your site, including the WordPress credit link.

In previous years, the default WordPress themes made it easy for people who aren’t proficient in code to quickly spot which lines of code to delete in order to remove the footer credit link. All you have to do is search for “Proudly powered by” in the code.

Go to Appearance > Editor in the WordPress admin,

In the list of files on the right, click on Theme Footer (footer.php), and

Look for and delete the following lines of code:

Click Update File and the footer credit link will no longer appear on your website.

Older WordPress default themes such as Twenty Fifteen and Twenty Fourteen work in a similar way – if you search for “Proudly powered by” and delete the associated code, it will remove the footer credit link.

However, Twenty Seventeen has made it a bit harder to find and remove the code – sort of. While there’s just one line of code you need to remove, it’s not as easy to find.

In order to remove the WordPress footer credit link from the Twenty Seventeen theme:

Go to Appearance > Editor in the WordPress admin,

In the list of files on the right, click on Theme Footer (footer.php), and

Look for and delete the following line of code:

Click Update File. The next time you refresh your website, the footer credit will no longer be there.

And that is all.

Conclusion

I hope this tutorial has helped you customize your theme and remove the WordPress footer link credit. You can share your experience with us via the comment box below.

Fantastic blog! Do you have any hints for aspiring writers?I’m hoping to start my own blog soon but I’m a little lost on everything.Would you recommend starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid option? There areso many options out there that I’m completely overwhelmed ..Any tips? Thanks!

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